The present invention relates to the field of packaging semiconductor devices, and more particularly to packaging light emitting diodes.
Light emitting diodes (LEDS) are often packaged within leadframe packages. A leadframe package typically includes a molded or cast plastic body that encapsulates an LED, a lens portion, and thin metal leads connected to the LED and extending outside the body. The metal leads of the leadframe package serve as the conduit to supply the LED with electrical power and, at the same time, may act to draw heat away from the LED. Heat is generated by the LED when power is applied to the LED to produce light. A portion of the leads extends out from the package body for connection to circuits external to the leadframe package.
Some of the heat generated by the LED is dissipated by the plastic package body; however, most of the heat is drawn away from the LED via the metal components of the package. The metal leads are typically very thin and has a small cross section. For this reason, capacity of the metal leads to remove heat from the LED is limited. This limits the amount of power that can be sent to the LED thereby limiting the amount of light that can be generated by the LED.
To increase the capacity of an LED package to dissipate heat, in one LED package design, a heat sink slug is introduced into the package. The heat sink slug draws heat from the LED chip. Hence, it increases the capacity of the LED package to dissipate heat. However, this design introduces empty spaces within the package that is be filled with an encapsulant to protect the LED chip. Furthermore, due to significant differences in CTE (coefficient of thermal expansion) between various components inside the LED package, bubbles tend to form inside the encapsulant or the encapsulant tends to delaminate from various portions within the package. This adversely affects the light output and reliability of the product. In addition, this design includes a pair of flimsy leads which are typically soldered by a hot-iron. This manufacturing process is incompatible with convenient surface mounting technology (SMT) that is popular in the art of electronic board assembly.
In another LED package design, the leads of the leadframe package have differing thicknesses extended (in various shapes and configurations) beyond the immediate edge of the LED package body. A thicker lead is utilized as a heat-spreader and the LED chip is mounted on it. This arrangement allows heat generated by the LED chip to dissipate through the thicker lead which is often connected to an external heat sink. This design is inherently unreliable due to significant difference in coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) between the plastic body and the leadframe material. When subjected to temperature cycles, its rigid plastic body that adheres to the metal leads experiences high degree of thermal stresses in many directions. This potentially leads to various undesirable results such as cracking of the plastic body, separation of the plastic body from the LED chip, breaking of the bond wires, delaminating of the plastic body at the interfaces where it bonds to various parts, or resulting in a combination of these outcomes. In addition, the extended leads increase the package size and its footprint. For this reason, it is difficult to populate these LED packages in a dense cluster on a printed circuit board (PCB) to generate brighter light.
Another disadvantage of the current leadframe design is that the thick lead cannot be made or stamped into a fine circuit for flip-chip mounting of a LED—which is commonly used by some manufacturers for cost-effective manufacturing and device performance.
Consequently, there remains a need for an improved LED package that overcomes or alleviates one or more of the shortcomings of the prior art packages.